Saturday, December 15, 2012

Bob Arum, one of boxing's most powerful promoters recently turned 81. He was profiled by Sports Illustrated. Check out Arum's recounting of one of the earliest MMA fights: Muhammad Ali vs Antonio Inoki...

Picture from http://www.fanbase.com/photo/355211

In 1976, Herbert Muhammad approached Arum with an offer: A group of
Japanese businessmen were willing to pay Ali $6 million to fight Antonio
Inoki, a legendary wrestler who had dabbled in mixed martial arts, in
Tokyo. At first Arum was reluctant: Ali was already planning to defend
his heavyweight title against Ken Norton later in the year. But $6
million was $6 million, so Arum called Vince McMahon Sr., who offered to
script the fight.

"The way Vince wrote it, Ali was
supposed to come out and look like he was hitting Inoki with punches,"
says Arum. "Now wrestlers, they use razors to cut themselves. So Inoki
was supposed to cut himself, and blood would be everywhere. Then Ali
would turn to the ref and say, 'Hey, please stop the fight. Then Inoki
would jump on Ali's back and pin him. Ali would get up and say this was
just like Pearl Harbor, then we'd all go home. So Ali leaves for Japan.
When he gets there he meets with Ron Holmes, the American liaison for
Inoki. And Holmes thought everything was legitimate!""So I fly over there and me, Ferdie [Pacheco, Ali's doctor], Angelo
[Dundee, his trainer] and Herbert meet with these Japanese promoters. I
said, 'Hey, we have to figure out how to do this thing.' After about 20
minutes of negotiating the ground rules, these Japanese guys started
getting pissed off. They started making all these threats about how
Inoki was going to break Ali's leg, how Ali was not going to fight
Norton. Then they wanted us to sign a piece of paper saying it was
winner take all. When we left the room we had no f------ idea how this
fight was going to go. But we had to do the fight. We had sold tickets
to the closed circuit at Shea Stadium, with an undercard between Chuck
Wepner and Andre the Giant. There was a lot of money on the line.

"So
the bell rings, and in the first round, Inoki comes out and flops on
his ass and starts kicking his legs out. I'm thinking, OK, this is
interesting. Maybe he's playing possum. Second round, same s---. By the
fourth round Ali is yelling, 'You bastard, get up and fight.' But Inoki,
he's kicking Ali's legs and they start bleeding. Finally Inoki gets up,
and Ali swings and misses him by a foot. But Inoki, he staggers back
into the ropes like he just got shot. After 15 rounds the referee calls
it a draw. Ali's legs got infected, and we almost had to call off the
Norton fight."

Since the date today is 9/9/09... it would've been cool to post at either the morning or the evening at the time of 9:09:09 LOL Forgive...

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Not sure if it will be the final look of the site or not, but the Sojourn of Septillion Steps with respect to the site's look has already taken quite a few steps beyond the first!

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